Hello! Apologies for my radio silence. I was in London for a bit - my favourite place in the world, - and it was non-stop running around trying to see everyone I hadn’t seen in six years. Then when I got back I had my colonoscopy, I’ll spare you the details, and started a new job. I’m freaking exhausted. And missing London. It was so fantastic being back, I lived there for almost 10 years and still consider that’s where my life is. In fact, as soon as I set foot in Archway after getting off the plane then Tube, it was like I had never left, and these past six years have been some sort of bizarre dream in exile. I had booked a flight for March 2020 and was going to be doing my first ever hour-long Young Southpaw comedy shows. I fondly remember running the set in a North Hollywood rehearsal room. Then everything went crazy. I was left with a ticket I had to use by the end of 2023. It was a scramble but I made it happen. And I can’t tell you how much I wish I was there now.
I went to see Peter Hook & The Light my first proper day in town. He was doing both Joy Division and New Order Substance albums. I was running late after trying - and failing - to go to a Chelsea Women’s football match. Their grounds are unbelievably far from where I was staying in North London and no one told me they close the gates after 60 minutes. It was then a trek to Hammersmith where I knew everything would be ok once I heard Hooky play the bassline to ‘Ceremony’, a part and song that I have loved ever since I first heard it in 1993. As luck would have it, they started with the New Order album instead of the Joy Division one and I arrived halfway through ‘Everything’s Gone Green’, missing ‘Ceremony’ by one song. But then next up was ‘Temptation’, arguably my favourite song of all-time. The New Order’s songs weren’t always in Hooky’s register and guitarist David Potts ending up taking about half of the vocals (his Barney is spot on), but oh man when they did the Joy Division set it was perfect for Hooky’s voice. Getting to hear ‘Digital’, ‘No Love Lost’, and ‘Atmosphere’ - one of my other all-time faves - was amazing.
After I had finished Martin Amis’ Inside Story, I stumbled upon Suzanne McConnell’s Pity The Reader: On Writing With Style about Kurt Vonnegut and decided to give it a go. The trouble with audiobooks is that the narrator really makes or breaks them, and this narrator had a habit of talking about writing as if it’s ultra-precious, and that always puts me off. Hard to tell if this is how McConnell meant her written words, it was all down to enuncation. But the details of Vonnegut’s life were interesting. And it made me remember that Cat’s Cradle was the book that made me fall in love with literature. When I was 14, my extended family was on vacation in Rockport, MA - my other favourite place in the world - where we’d go every year for my grandfather’s birthday in July, and my older cousin Keith mentioned it to me. I talked about Keith at the Ballad Of Buttery Cake Ass readings, his enthusiasm for stuff always rubbed off on me growing up and it was through his efforts that I got to go see David Lee Roth on the Eat ‘Em And Smile tour when I was ten years old. So I marched down to the local bookstore, Toad Hall, and bought a copy. I loved Toad Hall, and am still sad to see it closed and renovated into a luxury apartment whenever I go to Rockport these days. It was such a cool little bookshop in an old granite bank, fiction on the first floor, with two thin black circular iron stairways that led up and down. Up to History Etc. and down to the Children’s section, where I spent a lot of time in my early years. But this would be my first occasion to buy something on that main floor. And was captivated by what Vonnegut evoked. I had nothing else to compare it to, true, but it was then I fell in love with the written word. A year or two later, I would buy Hocus Pocus, again on our long weekend in Rockport, and read it over the break. Then over the next few years, my grandmother bought me all the great early 90s Vintage paperbacks of Vonnegut’s works. I am gutted to see that I no longer have most of them. This year it has really struck me hard that one should never sell books.
I do still have Cat’s Cradle and Hocus Pocus. And brought them with me on the plane. I read CC on the way over and once again enjoyed it very much. Especially the first half, when he’s in New York. I’m not exactly sure what it is, but Vonnegut’s descriptions of the mainland resonated with me much more than once they get to the island of San Lorenzo. Upon arriving at my friend Ben’s flat, I was pleased to spy Slaughterhouse Five in his (overflowing) bookcases. Now here’s a man who never sells anything. I took it with me on the Tube and really got to experience it for the first time. I had read it for a school project when I was 15 but I was far too young to really get it then. But now, what a wonderful portrayal of the horrors and inanity of war. And the bit where the film plays backwards and the bombs are sucked up and people are healed, extending all the way back to Adam and Eve, is so brilliant. Martin Amis must’ve had this in mind for Time’s Arrow, no?
Vonnegut is also tied to what I consider to be a defining moment in my life. In July of 1986 while on vacation in Rockport, my father took me to the movies to see Rodney Dangerfield’s Back To School, and when that finished we went across the street to the Peabody Mall and I bought David Lee Roth’s Eat ‘Em And Smile, which had just been released. The two powerful forces of music and comedy seemed to set a course for me. And Vonnegut has that wonderful cameo in the film:
Listening-wise, it’s been mostly Led Zeppelin and New Order on my stereo - I’m reading Hooky’s excellent New Order book Substance and listening to Bob Spitz’s incredibly detailed 21 hour Led Zeppelin: The Biography audiobook - but I did take a break to dig the sounds of Melenas’ Ahora album after Marc Masters called it one of the indie-rock albums of the year. It’s very good. Big Stereolab vibe.
I’m also thrilled to share the cover of my next book, Sporting Moustaches, illustrated by the awesome Allen Crawford. Sporting Moustaches will be published April 1, 2024 by Sagging Meniscus, a publisher I love.
SEVEN SONGS:
Melenas - ‘Bang’. The big pop hit from Ahora.
Joy Division - ‘Atmosphere’. I always say this is my second favourite song of all-time, right behind ‘Temptation’. Utterly gorgeous, expressing the cosmic inexpressible. When I was a teenager I had these Joy Division - A Retrospective tapes, and on Part II there’s a version of ‘Atmosphere’ from The Paradiso, Amsterdam January 11 1980. Finding it again now gave me the chills. I love how at 24 seconds in, Hooky leaves out the middle note of that bass part section giving it a syncopated feel. This is the only version I know where he does that. And it just happens the once. He probably just missed the note but the effect is killer
Guided By Voices - ‘The Race Is On, The King Is Dead’. I’m enjoying the new GBV, Nowhere To Go But Up, out November 24th. Here’s the lead-off track
Led Zeppelin - ‘Rock and Roll’. I’ve loved this song since I first discovered it, right after getting Van Hagar’s Live Without A Net home video for xmas in 1986. Filmed right up the road in New Haven (‘New Halen’), Connecticut. VH encored with it and I was smitten. Luckily, later that day my cousin Keith told me it was by Led Zeppelin. I listen to this every night on my drive home from the new job. In The Ballad Of Buttery Cake Ass, bassist Davey Down, heartbroken over two longtime crushes not panning out, writes a song called ‘Long Lonely Time’, cribbed from this very song, and I was so pleased with that, in the Discography at the end of the book, I had a lot of fun having Davey go on a huge Zeppelin kick lasting many many of his own albums, filled with puns and references to the band.
Bobby Conn - ‘Never Get Ahead’. I’ve been once again trying to get my inbox down to zero, so in the fasting leading up to my colonoscopy, I was going through the 3400 emails I had let accumulate, and came across this video my friend Jim had sent me last year. I’m into its indie-rock Jackson 5 vibes
Outer World - ‘Forms Of Knowing’. Digging the French psych of the new Outer World tune. Tracy Wilson from Dahlia Seed and Kenneth Close. They came to my Ballad Of Buttery Cake Ass reading at Plan 9 in Richmond and was cool to hang with them. Album coming in March
Hedvig Mollestad Weejuns - ‘Go at your peril’. Oh yeah! I also listened to Hedvig’s new one the other night and it’s a big contender for my Album Of The Year. Loving its 70s Miles feel. I love Hedvig’s music, she’s a fantastic guitarist, and it was a pleasure to interview her when I was doing the podcast.
I’m also collecting all these Seven Songs lists here on a monster Apple playlist